7 Items

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Fiscal Education for the G-7

| May 26, 2016
As the G-7 Leaders gather in Ise-Shima, Japan, on May 26-27, the still fragile global economy is on their minds.  They would like a road map to address stagnant growth. Their approach should be to talk less about currency wars and more about fiscal policy.Fiscal policy vs. monetary policyUnder the conditions that have prevailed in most major countries over the last ten years, we have reason to think that fiscal policy is a more powerful tool for affecting the level of economic activity, as compared to monetary policy.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

It Takes More than Two to Tango: Cry, But Not for Argentina, nor for the Holdouts

| July 22, 2014
U.S. federal courts have ruled that Argentina is prohibited from making payments to fulfill 2005 and 2010 agreements with its creditors to restructure its debt, so long as it is not also paying a few creditors that have all along been holdouts from those agreements.  The judgment is likely to stick, because the judge (Thomas Griesa, in New York) told American banks on June 27 that it would be illegal for them to transfer Argentina’s payments to the 92 per cent of creditors who agreed to be restructured and because the US Supreme Court in June declined to review the lower court rulings.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Cuba: A Trip Back to 1959

| Nov. 25, 2012
I recently visited Cuba for the first time, to participate in scholarly meetings.  For an American citizen this short voyage requires a leap through hyperspace.   It was my third attempt over ten years to get there.  Obstacles had included both the US government and the Cuban government.This was a trip back in time, to 1959.   For one thing, a majority of the (few) autos on the street in Havana are large American cars from the 1950s.  Most are beautiful.   One hears about the cars, but I had thought the reports must be exaggerated.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Will Emerging Markets Fall In 2012

| Jan. 23, 2012
Emerging markets have performed amazingly well over the last seven years. They have outperformed the advanced industrialized countries in terms of economic growth, debt-to-GDP ratios, and countercyclical fiscal policy.  Many now receive better assessments by rating agencies and financial markets than some of the advanced economies.As 2012 begins, however, emerging markets may be due for a correction, triggered by a new wave of “risk off” behavior among investors. Will China experience a hard landing? Will a decline in commodity prices hit Latin America? Will the sovereign-debt woes of the European periphery spread to neighbors such as Turkey in a new “Aegean crisis”?Engorged by large capital inflows, some emerging market countries were in an overheated state a year ago.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

The Phylloxera Analogy: Lessons from Emerging Markets

| Dec. 24, 2010
In 2008, the global financial system was grievously infected by so-called toxic assets originating in the United States. As a result of the crisis, many have asked what fundamental rethinking will be necessary to save macroeconomic theory. Some answers may lie with models that have in the past been applied to fit the realities of emerging markets — models that are at home with the financial market imperfections that have now unexpectedly turned up in industrialized countries. The imperfections include default risk, asymmetric information, incentive incompatibility, procyclicality of capital flows, procyclicality of fiscal policy, imperfect property rights, and other flawed institutions.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Support the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia!

| Apr. 24, 2008
Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times today, “Better Roses than Cocaine,” says it all.   There is no good reason for the US Congress to continue to hold up the free trade agreement that the Administration has negotiated with Colombia.    Free trade with Colombia can’t have anything to do with loss of US jobs:   Colombia’s exports already enter the US duty-free.   Rather, the Free Trade Agreement would reduce remaining Colombian barriers to imports from the US.